1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dental devices and, particularly, to a scan body for mating to an impression coping positioned in a dental impression.
2. Description of the Related Art
To replace a broken or damaged tooth a patient will typically undergo a surgical procedure in which a dentist places an implant in the location of the patient's mouth missing the tooth/teeth. Generally, the implant will incorporate an opening having a hexagonal shape for receiving an impression coping and, subsequently, a dental prosthesis. After the implant has been inserted into the patient's mouth, the dentist will typically insert the impression coping, having a head portion, into the implant having the opening configured for receiving the head portion of the impression coping.
Subsequently, the dentist will take a “pick-up” dental impression of the patient's mouth having the impression coping. Once the impression material has hardened and the dental impression is complete, the dentist can remove the “pick-up” dental impression from the patient's mouth and attach a female hex onto the head portion, having a hexagonal shape, of the impression coping. This can then be sent to a lab to create a dental mold, in stone form, of the patient's teeth with the female hex representing the position of the implant in the patient's mouth. It is to be noted that the “pick-up” dental impression is used only for implant cases.
A scan body is screwed into the female hex positioned inside the dental mold and the dental mold is scanned using a CADCAM computer program so as to design the prosthetic tooth virtually. The scan body can have indexing means that can allow the CADCAM program to determine the orientation and angle of the scan body relative to the hex shape on the dental mold, so that the CADCAM program can design the implant prosthetic correctly. The conventional scan body has an opening through which a screw extends. This hole causes slight distortion in the screw.
While most CADCAM scanners have the ability to scan both dental impressions and dental molds, a majority of the dentists are currently scanning the dental molds instead of using the dental impressions created directly from the patient's mouth. Relying on the dental molds, however, can negatively impact the accuracy of the design of the prosthetic tooth implanted into a patient's mouth since accuracy tends to decrease each time information is transferred from the patient's mouth to the dental impression, from the dental impression to the dental mold and from the dental mold to the scanned impression, which then must be restored in a digital format by the computer. Further, most scan bodies are too large to fit within smaller gaps between teeth.
Thus, a scan body for a dental impression solving the aforementioned problems is desired.